


watching you flicker in real time

by starlatine



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Car Sex, Getting Together, M/M, Resolved Sexual Tension, the perils of ghosting your coworker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-19
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-05-06 08:01:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14637528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starlatine/pseuds/starlatine
Summary: Shane picks up his phone to check one more time: no bars, no data. He refuses to freak out, or even acknowledge this, because he doesn’t want to pander to Ryan’s paranoia, so he powers the thing off and then on again. Still no bars, no data, which Ryan can obviously see over his arm.Ryan puts his head in his hands and drags them down his face. “Ohgod. We are so fucked. The schedule is going to be ruined. I didn’t even pack any snacks.”





	watching you flicker in real time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [reeby10](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reeby10/gifts).



> Authorial caveats: The timeline of this fic is extremely fuzzy. There are a lot of things I don’t understand the workings of, most notably the processes that produce webseries. Also, this fic has little to do with the IRL people Ryan Bergara and Shane Madej or their romantic lives and is purely a work of fiction based on their media personas. It also takes place in a reality where they are both single.
> 
> Also, content warning for flippant references to true-crime-typical upsetting happenings.

Shane’s blinking away sleep when he feels the tell-tale vibration near his head. It’s so bad to sleep with his phone, he knows he should at _least_ turn it off overnight, but unplugging is easier said than done, especially when he knows the first thing he’s going to do upon waking up is boot the thing back up again. It’s kind of a waste of time to shut it off in the first place.

Shane rubs his face with the back of one of his hands while he squints, trying, glasses-less, to make out the words on the screen.

_**Ryan Bergara** 8:03_ : _it’s official….. eight seasons and a movie baby!!_

He writes back: _a movie? hmmmmmm_

_**Ryan Bergara** 8:04_ : _well that part not so much_

_**Ryan Bergara** 8:04_ : _but a boy can dream_

He gets out of bed before he fires the replies off, one after another. _I can see it now. found footage compilation_

_we have to go off grid for a week to drum up hype_

_then the twist comes when they come get us from the cabin we’re holed up in and find us murder-suicided from the mental strain of living together. whodunit?_

He’s waiting for the electric kettle to boil when he gets the replies, three little dings that send the familiar mixture of exasperation and excitement running through his limbs. 

_**Ryan Bergara** 8:11_ : _hahahaha no way_

_**Ryan Bergara** 8:11_ : _shaky cam is so 2000 and late_

_**Ryan Bergara** 8:12_ : _everything else you said is plausible though_

-

"I mean, there was no way we _weren't_ going to get renewed." Ryan’s bubbling over with excitement, his knee jiggling under the work desk.

“Careful. Keep talking like that, you’re going to jinx us.” Shane keeps his eyes on the monitor, fiddling with sound levels.

It's... exciting. It is. Also intense.

He wasn’t _surprised_ when they get commissioned for two more seasons. The writing was on the wall. Getting to work on a project with brand recognition and good production values is always nice. That being said, it’s all still a bit… weird. Maybe less so for Ryan, since Unsolved is his firstborn, but Shane just sort of found himself filling in for Brent in a video on four hours’ notice, which is a thing that happens, and now he’s a co-host on a subchannel’s flagship series. 

He’s seen himself namedropped on random websites too many times for comfort. You can buy t-shirts with a cartoon likeness of him on them. It’s not bad. Just weird. But Ryan is still buzzing with it, and he’s happy for him. He is.

Ryan gets up to leave a couple minutes early. They control their own schedules, to a certain degree, in the sense that they’re kind of always at work even when they’re not. He runs his hand across Shane’s shoulders as he walks out of the office. 

“I’m out of town for the rest of the week. See you at the renewal party, hey?”

Shane nods, even though Ryan can’t hear him, and tries not to think about the way Ryan gets handsy when he’s excited.

-

It’s kind of an employee-appreciation type thing, part networking bash, part awkward corporate mixer, two parts excuse to get trashed on company money. He’s been to tons of these things by now, but the weird, unsettled feeling in the pit of his stomach hasn’t gone away, and he makes his way through a couple time-killing beers before leaving his apartment, since he hasn’t been able to focus on anything else all day. He waffles over which specific plaid shirt to wear for about half an hour, and then makes his way over. It’s technically a party in honor of everyone who works on Unsolved, but as 50% of the most visible crew members he should _probably_ be on time. 

From as soon as he walks through the door, the nervousness mostly fades to the background, pushed out by the stimulation: they hired a DJ that he thinks is Eugene’s cousin, if his memories of the last holiday party are accurate, and there are people _everywhere_. The space they rented out is pretty fun, lots of different rooms offshooting from the main bar, so you can actually talk to people. 

He catches up with Pat for a while, which is great, Pat is fun, and he’s about to ask where Ryan is when he sees him on the other side of the room, wearing an honest-to-god pineapple shirt because Ryan Bergara is, deep down, a frat boy. He makes some kind of an excuse to Pat about wanting to get another drink—which is true, he does get another drink—and then weaves through the throng of people he both recognizes and doesn’t. He’s able to pinpoint the specific moment Ryan sees him coming, because his eyebrows shoot up and the grin leaves his face, no longer laughing, but seemingly taunting him, like, what do you want with me?

Shane doesn’t know, but still inserts himself between Ryan and the intern he’s talking to, whose name Shane should know but can’t remember because he’s a terrible person. He’s allowed to do that. People know they work together, they know each other better than pretty much anyone else in the room. He also realizes, belatedly, that he’s been scanning the room for Ryan for the last hour, and now that he’s found him he feels like things have actually started. “Where ya been, Ryan?”

“Stuck in traffic on the way over. Hey, are we going to have to get up and say stuff in a bit?”

“I hope not. If so, it better be soon. The food is pretty good, if I was a random crew member I wouldn’t want to have to stop eating to listen to me.”

Ryan is drinking some kind of cocktail with a straw and he looks like an idiot on a resort vacation. Shane can’t keep a stupid, lopsided expression off his face; thankfully the intern has moved on after being edged out of the conversation and Ryan’s the only person who will notice. “Nobody said anything about it, so I’m going to go with no.”

“Going to have to keep that acceptance speech in my pocket for another day.” Shane laughs, and it doesn’t feel like he’s surrounded by a hundred people, just like it’s the two of them, sitting at monitors in Ghoul HQ sifting through footage for the sixth straight hour. Like the weird social expectations of working a media job have faded away, and it’s just the work, and the people you do the work with. That, he can handle. He knows how to do this part. 

They do, actually, get called up by the MC to speak at one point; it’s brief, and even though he’s about five drinks deep at this point Shane manages to Mad Libs something mostly genuine and moderately coherent about being grateful for the support and excited about what’s coming next. Ryan’s better; he’s always better at stuff like this. Ryan comes off as genuine no matter what he’s doing. It’s why he’s so likeable. Shane knows him well enough, by now, to understand that he’s not always the enthusiastic, plucky Internet personality he comes across as, but after Ryan takes the mic from him and speaks he’s so sincere that Shane feels himself a little bit moved, even though he thought he was immune to stuff like this by now.

They've been living out of each other's pockets for a few years now, but it's still hard to tell where the screen banter ends and a real friendship begins. Under the facade of easygoing SoCal bro, Ryan is more easily described as "persnickety" than anyone else Shane knows. He's a high-strung perfectionist with more drive than most people will ever have; it's what makes him such a pain in the ass, and so hard to stay away from. 

All told, they’re probably standing in front of the room for fifteen minutes total before things go back into party mode. Even though there’s no more imperative to hang out together, besides the vague knowledge that it probably looks good for the show to have their hosts seem like real friends, Shane finds himself wanting them to stay like this. There’s just so many people, so much going on, and he knows Ryan. He’s… comforting, weirdly, because Shane knows exactly all the ways in which he’s going to be annoying and can adapt his own behavior accordingly. So when they step back into the crowd, he seizes an impulse and puts his hand on Ryan’s shoulder, leans in closer to his ear, and says, “I heard there’s a secret bar near the back. We’re probably VIPs, right?”

Ryan laughs, his trademark wheeze, half-performance, half-uncontainable delight, and says “Fuck yeah, we are. It’s our party!”

-

Shane would later come to blame Rihanna. Rihanna, and being the only ones in the vicinity of the “secret bar” (read: a cooler in what probably used to be a janitorial closet) when “Love On the Brain” thudded away in the background. Ryan sings along to the “ow ow ow ow” parts under his breath with a flush high on his cheeks, the whole room sways pleasantly, and Shane talks without his brain coming into the picture. 

“Is this permission to call you ‘bad boy Ry Ry?’” At that, Ryan gets a look like his beer just went down the wrong tube, so Shane presses on. “You know, like her Instagram handle.”

“This is your worst joke ever.”

“‘Cause she’s @badgalriri.”

“Shut up. I can’t believe you took improv classes.”

“Does this make me Drake?”

“Out of the two of us, you’re definitely not Drake.”

“Hey Ryan... I think I’m Drake?”

Ryan shoves his shoulder. “You’re not Drake, I’m Drake.” 

The feeling of his hand on his shoulder lingers even after he brings it back. Ryan pushed pretty hard. He thinks about it for a second, and leans over to shove him back: he guesses he does it too hard, because Ryan takes a half-step back, laughing, shaking his head, and Shane licks his bottom lip without thinking.

Ryan has always been hot, in a weird, alternately douchey and wholesome way. He’s so uncool, but everyone likes him. People definitely like him more than they like Shane, and he gets why. Ryan is easy to be around. Ryan laughs with his whole body. Ryan can’t stop looking at him with his head a bit tilted, and Shane’s beginning to think the beers at home were a mistake, because the 10% of his brain still capable of being an adult is pretty sure his impulse control is not operating at its best.

It's not that he's never thought about what it'd be like to have sex with Ryan. He's definitely thought about it. Ryan is cute. He can admit that. He just never thought it'd stray beyond the realm of the hypothetical, but unless he's reading things very wrong, things seem to be trending in that direction.

As if seeking to prove that theory, the other 90% of Shane convinces him to say, “You look good tonight. Even though I hate that shirt.”

Ryan laughs, of course, says, “I can’t tell that shirt apart from your other ones enough to hate it, dude.”

It’s a pretty small room. Ryan has made no motions towards the door, even though there are, like, a million people out there worth hanging out with and god knows they see enough of each other as it is. Shane keeps looking Ryan over in a way that’s probably not subtle, and he thinks Ryan’s not meeting his eye as much as he normally would, like he’s a little nervous to make eye contact, and there are still people around, probably. Someone could come walk in on them pretty much whenever. He thinks he can hear feet, bodies shifting around, under the sounds of the music, but it could be all just in his head. They could be the last two people in the building, stars of the show or no.

Ryan asks, “Should we go back out there?” at the same time Shane blurts, “Do you wanna ditch and go somewhere else?”

At first there’s no response, then Ryan’s brows shoot up; he gets this look on his face like he belongs in one of those record scratch memes, but in real life. Like, just, no movement for like, five seconds at least? But Shane knows Ryan, now, better than he ever signed up for, and he can spot the flush pushing up past his exposed—oh, huh, exposed—collarbone and thinks it looks good on him. 

Ryan’s eyes skitter over everything in sight except Shane. He laughs, a high-pitched, frenetic cousin of what it usually sounds like, and runs his palms down his face. Ryan is an open book, though in this case it’s not giving Shane much to go off of. For his own part, Shane feels rooted in place, his face feeling sort of like wet clay hanging off his skull bones, desperately hoping he hasn’t read the situation completely wrong and ruined everything forever.

“Uh, yeah. I could be down. What were you thinking?”

Here we go, all or nothing, Shane Madej is betting it all. “I mean, your place is closer.”

Ryan freezes, again, but for not quite as long this time before he does look Shane in the eye with laser intensity. “Yeah, sure.”

-

So, predrinking: confirmed as never a good idea past the age of 25.

Shane wakes up at home (normal); head is impressively achey. Phone is dead. Clothes are strewn over the room. Mouth tastes like a graveyard, and he has a better idea these days of what that particular palette is like than any previous point in his life. Cool, cool.

He can’t remember anything between the party and now, but he’s alone, and he doesn’t feel like he had sex last night. He lays there, trying to ignore the jackhammer pulses behind his temples, and tries not to think about the sick feeling in his stomach that says he really, really fucked up.

Ten-ish minutes of self-fortification later, Shane is out of bed, his phone is plugged in, and his memory is fuzzily churning along, trying to take stock of the various and sundry vague clues kicking around that might help him figure out the chain of events of the previous night. 

He spits into the sink, swishing the toothpaste under his tongue, and scrolls with his free hand. There’s a collection of unread messages, all from various coworkers and friends who were at the party, plus an automated text notification informing him that his pizza delivery is on its way, which, he doesn’t have the faintest idea why he ordered that in the first place at a _catered work party_ , but whatever. The messages waiting for replies nag at him with their little blue dots, a column of _Hey man where u rn_ -s and _Have u seen Ryan? I have something for him_ -s and _duuuuuude did you ditch your own party? are you holding out on the good after hours spots LOL_ -s. There are no new messages from Ryan Bergara, which shouldn’t feel like a relief, but does, somehow. Shane’s not sure what he’s afraid of; nothing actually happened, besides—he feels down by his collarbone, and no, he _wasn’t_ imagining getting a hickey in the back of an Uber. Back to Ryan’s place. Until—and it’s all rushing back to him now—Shane had said he wanted to get dropped off first, even though it was his idea in the first place to sneak out early through the back. He just remembers Ryan’s hands on him in the car, how fast his heart was beating, and his own surprise he managed to get so hard while quite so drunk, and then the moment he realized there was a driver and, sure, neither of them are actually famous by LA standards, but it was still _really_ not something he wanted coming out in news media. 

The memories are kind of disjointed, one not leading super clearly into another, but things start to seep in. He remembers streetlights streaking and flashing through the windows, blurry from velocity and intoxication; a crease in Ryan’s brow, “What? But I thought…”; his own scramble to get his limbs back to his side of the bench seat. Trying to ignore the hard-on in his jeans. And the thought, oddly clear in his inebriated brain, that if they went through with it, he wouldn’t be able to be chill about it afterwards. He doesn’t really _do_ one-night-stands. He’d have to get up in the morning, every day, and see Ryan knowing exactly what his dick tasted like, and play it off like it was just something that happened after a party. Better to cut things off at the pass.

He’s pretty sure he didn’t imagine fumbling for his keys on the way out of the car. The sound of Ryan from inside, saying, “Dude, what the fuck,” he’s not so sure about. It’s a toss-up.

Ryan doesn’t text him that day, or the next. He tries to come up with something, himself, but he doesn’t know what to say. What kind of olive branch works in a situation like this? A Venmo for the ride home, with the attached message, _sorry, I realized I want you to fuck me too much to let you actually fuck me; see you Monday_?

-

Thankfully, there's no actually seeing-Ryan-Monday in the immediate future. The show is offline for three blessed weeks. He's got Ruining History to work on, obviously, but he does have a lot of free time compared to the usual, and he makes the most of it. For the most part. It's been a long time since he's actually felt logged off. Everyone he knows is online all the time, and he cares about them, so he goes on to see what's up in their lives, but then everything is work because how do you go on Facebook without seeing people share BuzzFeed links? It's not possible.

After waffling for a couple days, Shane buys a round-trip ticket for one to O'Hare. Before he flies out, he visits the gym (proof of an impending crisis, seriously), hangs out with some friends who've come in from out of town, and goes out for vegan poké with Teej (verdict: better than it had any right to be). No one says anything to him about it directly, but Teej does ask him offhand if he's seen Ryan in a couple days. Shane mumbles, "Oh, yeah, totally, we've got lunch plans", in what he feels comfortable calling one of the least persuasive tones of voice of all time. He doesn't even know why he lies about it. Teej doesn't press the question, because he's a saintly person.

He doesn't go home enough, he knows that, and he misses his family, but it's always bad weather and awkward meetups with people from high school where everyone circles around each other like hyenas, trying to assess how much everyone's accomplished compared to themselves. He's more famous than pretty much everyone he knows, except the obvious standout jocks who got sports scholarships and are pro by now and the kid in his homeroom who ended up writing for _Brooklyn 99_ , but talking to some people he graduated with, it's still kind of like, "yeah, you sure do have two kids and a salary and retirement fund set up already. Right." Like, he gets the feeling people think what he does is kind of… cute. They probably tell their moms, "Hey, remember Shane Madej from AP English? He's in YouTube videos for BuzzFeed now, isn't that funny?" And they're not wrong. It _is_ kind of funny.

But he doesn't know the next time he's gonna be able to come around, so he gets on the plane, gets picked up by his dad, they do the not-hug man-greeting of clapping each other on the upper arms and then talk about the Cubs most of the way out from the airport. It’s not lost on him that he’s been with Ryan for about 50% of his flights over the past few years and he kind of doesn't know what to do with himself. 

They get back to the house in time for dinner, even though his sister works late and can’t make it. They eats his mom's casserole and it tastes as great as ever—one thing the West Coast can’t offer is casseroles—and he manages to talk for ten minutes about how things are going on the show without mentioning Ryan at all. Neither of them ask about him, for which Shane is eternally grateful and promises, in his heart, to avoid sharing embarrassing anecdotes about them on camera for at least a few months.

-

Shane likes LA well enough; there are worse places to move to for work, and there's always something going on, but it's definitely not a place that's ever felt like a home to him. He gets nostalgic for Illinois, and then goes back a couple times a year to do... what? Hang out in the old bedroom his parents still haven't converted into anything else besides a graveyard for all the printers and microwaves they can't bear to throw out, and look at people's Instagram stories. Ryan is hard to ignore, since he's still one of the first icons that shows up whenever he opens the app, so Shane sits through them all: there are a lot of pictures of various craft beers, plus some kind of colorful food bowls that definitely have quinoa in it, which isn't usually Ryan's vibe, so he's probably eating out with someone else. Which is fine, and not something Shane should get weird about.

His parents still work during the week, so besides meeting up with a couple friends, Shane spends more time than he can justify hanging out at his parents’ place and scrolling through the listings from the job boards he's still subscribed to that are still being piped into his email on a regular basis. Digital content specialist etc etc etc. He's kind of tempted to send out portfolios just to see what happens, which he doesn't even really understand. He's happy where he is. He's doing okay for himself. He likes his coworkers. It's unlikely he'd get to be doing the same kind of stuff anywhere else; he'd have to work his way back up, and nothing is stable. He can't even count the amount of times he's gone for beers with coworkers and it's ended in dark speculations about whether or not BF will even be around in five years, whether it'll go bankrupt, get bought up and transformed by a bigger corp, or just get Gawker'd by someone for reasons that have nothing to do with any of them. Where else could he go where that wouldn't be even more likely? BuzzFeed is as big as it gets. He doesn't have any complaints, really, or at least not about anything that wouldn't be just as bad anywhere else. It's cool. He's fine.

The bed in this room has been too short for him since high school, and it hasn't improved much over time.

He gets a message from his sister, asking him if he wants to go out for drinks that night: he hasn't drank since That Night, but why else is he here? There's nothing more authentically Midwestern than not being able to really talk to your family members until multiple beers have been consumed. She suggests a spot he's never heard of, which has been given two dollar signs on Yelp and, judging by the photos, is indistinguishable from the last three bars he visited in LA. They've all got that glossy, exposed-brick Airbnb look to them. It's not a complaint, really, just a thing. You can cross half the country and the coffee shops are just as pristine and weirdly inhospitable.

He arrives at eight, and she’s already picked out a table. They don’t text much, but it always feels like they just saw each other: they breeze through the catch-up questions so she can regale him with her most recent Tinder story, and it might be the first time he’d felt genuinely relaxed since he got off the plane. Maybe since the renewal. 

They make it about an hour before she cuts through his but-no-really-how-are-yous and returns the favour.

“So, the show got renewed.”

He takes a long sip and realizes that he’d made more of a dent into the beer than he’d thought. No luck on that delay strategy. “Sure did.”

“You seem a bit… not stoked.”

“I’m stoked. I’m totally stoked.”

“I mean, having a job must be nice.”

“It’s not like I’m freelance. It’s not Unsolved or lining up for the dole like... like some kind of 1930s farmer in a pageboy cap.”

“Still, though. Does it really suck that bad?”

“It doesn’t suck. It’s… it’s good.” _The people are good,_ he doesn’t say, but is pretty sure it comes through anyway.

“You just never seem as into it. Like, I know that’s your schtick and everything, but you don’t have to keep doing it if it’s a total chore.”

“Oh god, do you actually watch it? That’s embarrassing.”

“Oh, you know Mom got a smart TV just so she could watch you over dinner.”

He puts his face in his hands. “Jesus Christ.”

“But seriously, do they have you on some crazy contract? Are you locked in? Is BuzzFeed the Marvel to your RDJ?”

"No, no, they don’t. I like the job. It’s just…” He tries to sift through his brain to come up with what, exactly, is the thing always lurking behind his ability to be full-bore excited about it. “It's just FOMO. It's not that deep."

“I mean, what do you think you’re missing out on? You’re my glamorous Hollywood video producer brother.”

“I don’t even know what I mean. I feel like the work-life balance is... not great.”

“Yes, _that_ particular unicorn.” She arches an eyebrow over the rim of her glass.

The beer is hitting his head, and the inside of the bar is dark, and it makes it easy to blurt, “I almost had sex with Ryan.”

“Jesus, really? _That’s_ what this is about?”

“I don’t know? Maybe?”

She’s silent for the first stretch of time since they saw each other, and then she puts her hand on his elbow. They’re really not a touchy family, which he doesn’t usually feel bad about, but maybe this whole thing comes from the deep layers of his repression. It would, at least, be a satisfying explanation.

“Have you talked about it?”

He just gives her a look, and she laughs, full-body, with her head tilted back. As if sensing the awkwardness of the moment, the server comes by with their next round, and if they both take the following few seconds as an opportunity to drink instead of keep talking about his terrible decisions, he’s not too sad about it.

-

The next morning he gets back on a plane, back to the real world, with a much more moderate hangover dancing around his temples. The office wants their formal episode outlines in by the end of the week, and his perusal of the Google Doc sees Ryan’s ghostly edits all over it, though his live-editing icon is mercifully absent. If this all gets approved, they’ll be spending a good part of the next few weeks filming on-location, which means extra time spent in close quarters with Ryan: unavoidable, obviously— _hence why sleeping together would have been a bad idea_ —but something in the back of his head says that it almost would be easier if they had just boned and moved on. Now, it’s just this big question mark. No closure, no resolution. Just like their episodes, according to uncharitable YouTube commenters. 

He queues up some podcast episodes for the flight, but the hosts in one of them go on a tangent about alien encounters he has to skip through in 15-second increments until he just gives up in frustration and turns it off. He’s stuck in the window seat; he stares out at the void until they start to descend. No matter how many times he’s seen it, the sight of LA zooming up at you at night is still pretty insane. The lights just go on forever, like there’s no matter where you go, you’ll end up getting lost under some freeway somewhere. It used to be scary; now it’s just familiar. 

-

No matter how he’d like to delay it, life moves inexorably forward. He and Ryan manage to not see each other in person once until they actually have to hit the road for an on-location shoot, just dancing around each other’s preferred times in the office and communicating via impersonal Google Docs edits.

The weird part is how normal-but-not it is once they head out. Spending a lot of time with someone in airports is a way to get to know them, for sure. You get to know what their worst, most guilty-pleasure way to kill time is; you get uncomfortably familiar with the way their face looks with drool coming out the corner of their mouth. No one likes going to airports. Ryan doesn't hate it, because he's a freak, but the vague anxiety and lack of sleep makes everyone grouchy, not to mention how it costs $20 to get a halfway-passable meal and you have to take your shoes off in front of everyone and it's just. Really irritating. Shane's always like, "oh, I'll read a book", even though he can't remember the last time he actually sat down and read an entire book that wasn't on a screen, and though he optimistically sticks on in his bag every time it ends up being just so much dead weight to try and drag through security. In reality, he listens to podcasts and eats pretzels and tries not to look at Ryan, on the other side of the aisle, limbs tucked into himself as he lies back in the seat, dead to the world, a steady rivulet of drool running down out of the corner of his mouth.

It's not cute, and he's not just saying that. Ryan’s presence feels more overbearing than any person asleep on a plane should be. Shane can’t sleep on planes, and nothing else is holding his attention, and he feels like an adolescent. 

He can’t remember the last time someone outside his family knew all of his fast food orders. Like, _everywhere_. It’s… something. Ryan is something.

LAX to CLT, four hours and change, and then from there they’ve gotta drive out to the actual town. Small-town travel means that Best Western is as close as they're getting to a Fairmont, and he's not complaining—he likes a continental breakfast as much as the next guy, he's not quite Hollywood Elite enough to turn up his nose at some pineapple slices and yogurt sauce—it's just that it’s yet another leg of the trip, and things are already awkward.

The whole thing was weird from the start: not just because of the obvious reasons, either. They often ride separately, because it’s never just the two of them; the crew and equipment usually take up another vehicle or two, but they’d decided ahead of time in the episode outlines that Shane and Ryan would take the first car and everyone else in the second, because they had to fit all the hardware somewhere and they wanted to film the drive out to the spot. They were filming on location in a park in the Appalachians where several experienced hikers had vanished across several years. The true crime seasons were almost harder to make entertaining, because Shane couldn’t just lean on poking holes in Ryan’s bullshit constantly, and even though he knew they were supposed to be coming up with some good banter over the drive, nothing seemed to come.

They’ve done a lot of country driving these past couple years. Shane grew up in the city, so even though he likes a hike or two, the drives start to blur together at a certain point. The driving itself is easy as long as you mind the turns, and dot-on-a-map towns all look the same, even when they’re cute. The ones they visit are usually on life support as it is; the traffic from macabre look-seers like themselves usually make up a pretty significant part of the towns’ tourism, which at least comes in handy when people try and call the stuff they do for the show exploitative or in bad taste or whatever. _Someone_ needs to spend money on all the UFO-themed diners and cryptid mugs; might as well be them.

Shane had taken over the wheel, unspoken, when they got into the rental car at the airport; he always drove first. It was just what they did, which he’s thankful for, now; they didn’t actually have to talk it over. He tries to keep his eyes on the road, autopilot, instead of paying attention to Ryan fidgeting around in the passenger seat. He isn’t sure they’ve made eye contact since they left California.

After pressing buttons on his phone in silence for twenty minutes, Ryan let out a groan and sagged back against the seat in defeat.

“The bluetooth is being weird.”

“Use the cord.”

“I forgot to pack it.”

“Well, there’s your first mistake. Try the radio.”

Ryan fiddles with the dials with the air of someone trying to bullshit their way through a job interview when they lied on their resume. To be fair, Shane can’t remember the last time he used a car radio for anything other than checking the traffic report. But still. He’s embarrassed for him.

It doesn’t feel like they’re even very far out of Charlotte, but the highway seems desolate. The forest is thicker than he expected; the hills kind of loom around them. He's got a pretty high threshold for creepiness, obviously, but he does have to admit: this isn’t the kind of place he’d want to go hiking alone. 

Ryan channel flips for a while, but everything comes out fuzzy, so he gives up for a while. They keep driving in silence until Ryan clears his throat and asks, “Where are we headed, again?”

“You don’t remember?” Shane tries for joking, but it ends up sounding barbed anyway.

“I remember the park, but which town are we staying in? I feel like we haven’t seen a street sign in ages.”

“I think it’s called… Bunkersville? Brookersville? Check the GPS, dude, I’m driving.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Ryan picks up Shane’s phone from where it’s resting and plugs in his pass code without having to ask, which definitely does not send Shane into a ten-second condensed episode of painfully tender and anguished feelings before he gets over himself again. Ryan’s motionless for a second, looking down at the screen. “Dude, it says it’s timed out.”

Shane does look away from the road for a moment to stare at Ryan, trying to gauge if he’s doing a bit, but no, he looks serious. “Just try and plug the location in again.”

“I can’t. It won’t let me.”

“What do you mean, it _won’t let you_.”

“I mean, it’s not connecting to any signal and it won’t come up with any directions.”

“I have a great data package. You’re doing something wrong.” He doesn’t mean to sound as short as he does, but, whatever, this whole thing is stupid and just Ryan being a drama queen because they haven’t come up with any banter and they need to put an episode together with _something_. Part of him wonders if it's always going to be like this, now, needling each other in less and less fun ways just to get something down on camera.

“Whatever, man. Pull over and do it yourself. I’m just an idiot, I guess.” Ryan sounds like a sullen teenager, and Shane is so annoyed with him that he actually _does;_ there’s no other traffic, so the whole shoulder is theirs to claim, and it’s only once he’s put them into park that he realizes there’s no headlights in front or behind them.

“Ryan, do you see the other car?”

Ryan blinks. “Yeah, totally, they’re behind us, aren’t they?” He leans behind him, does the same 180-degree look-see Shane just finished, and then looks back at him with fear in his eyes. “What the fuck.”

“Did we miss a turn-off somewhere?”

“This whole thing is so weird. I don’t even know which exit we could’ve missed.”

Shane breathes in deeply. In through the nose, out through the mouth. He’s pretty sure that’s how you do it. Ryan is pointedly _not_ practicing any kinds of meditation techniques.

“...Shane. Are you getting cell reception now? Because I’m getting. Fucking. Nothing.”

Shane picks up his phone to check one more time: no bars, no data. He refuses to freak out, or even acknowledge this, because he doesn’t want to pander to Ryan’s paranoia, so he powers the thing off and then on again. Still no bars, no data, which Ryan can obviously see over his arm.

Ryan puts his head in his hands and drags them down his face. “Oh _god_. We are so fucked. The schedule is going to be ruined. I didn’t even pack any snacks.”

-

In the end, they decide to stay where they are and wait for the crew to catch up to them. They hadn’t passed anything notable for about an hour on the way behind them—the more he thinks about it, Shane’s sure they didn’t miss any exits—and up ahead just looks like darker and deeper hill country. They’ve been traveling all day. He’s exhausted. 

The sun is setting, and Shane has had to stop playing phone games out of concern for his battery. There’s too much stuff in the back to really push the seats back, so it’s just the two of them stuck in the front, trying not to brush elbows. Ryan hasn’t said anything in about half an hour, is just staring out the window with nervous energy radiating, visibly, out of his skin. It’s probably because Shane wants a rise out of him, wants to see him react to something, anything, that he says, “I kind of wish we were out here looking for a demon, because those aren’t real, and this murderer almost definitely is.”

“Shut up, Shane.”

“At least there’s two of us.”

“Yeah, that’s comforting. You’d probably piss him off enough I could get away.”

“Shut up, Ryan.”

Ryan laughs, but it's not particularly mirthful and he doesn’t look at Shane, just out the window. It’s dark enough Shane can only really make out his silhouette. “I never know what’s going on with you, man. I feel like I should, by now, but it’s just… I never know your deal.”

Shane blinks for a few seconds. “I didn't realize I had a ‘deal’.”

Ryan is quiet for long minutes, and then says, quietly, “Why didn’t you text me.”

“Why didn’t you text me!”

Ryan whips around in place. “Dude, I’m not the one who asked to come back to your place and then chickened out on the way there. You’re definitely the one being weird about this.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Bit late for that.”

“I’m sorry, Ryan.” He doesn’t know what, exactly, to say to make it better, so they sit in silence for way too long before he spits out something that, at least, feels true. “When we weren’t filming, I thought about you, like. Every day. After a while I just felt like I'd waited too long and there wasn't a point anymore.”

Ryan hasn't stopped looking at him with that focus he gets in his eyes sometimes. “I just don’t get it. Why did you bail?”

Shane tries to sheepishly shrug as well as he can inside the front seat of a hatchback. “I don't know! I was freaked out.”

“Yeah, I got that." Ryan tilts his head slightly. "Is it because of the dude thing?"

"No. I just..." In the dark, it's easier to be honest, even though it still feels like his mouth is running ahead of his brain completely. "I don’t know how it all comes so naturally to you. You just… everyone likes you, Ryan. Unsolved is your project. If things got awkward and one of us had to leave, you know it’d be me.”

“Well, things _did_ get awkward, and you’re still here. I can’t just do it by myself.” Ryan's voice goes oddly flat, and a month’s worth of regret and other emotions he doesn't want to name wells up in Shane’s chest. “I thought it meant something to you, I guess.”

“It does.” He inhales, slowly, and exhales. “You do.”

Ryan doesn’t say anything for a long while, so Shane goes out on a limb.

“You did look really hot that night.”

Ryan laughs, though it still sounds cautious. “So did you.”

“Well, I’m glad we agree on something.” The silence stretches on, the night totally devoid of noise, and the air between them feels stifling. "But also, you're hot in general. I think I had a crisis about it."

"Man, you should've told me sooner my wiles were just _that powerful._ I would've won so many arguments."

He's not really sure who does what first, but at one point Ryan had moved out of his seat to lean most of the way over the stick shift, and then his hand is on Shane's bicep, the warmth palpable even through layers of clothing, and Shane's not sure whether he's craning his neck to get closer or further away when he leans in, impulsively, and bites down on the exposed flesh on Ryan's neck. Ryan's fingers squeeze Shane's arm in a death grip as Ryan lets out a choked noise, and yeah, yes, this is _way better_ sober.

Once he's pretty secure in the fact he's paid him back for the Uber hickey, Shane pulls back a few inches and asks, “Are you offering me a mulligan right now? Is that what this is? I just want to be clear.”

Ryan coughs. “Oh my god, could you _be_ less sexy.”

“I thought you liked sports. I’m trying to communicate.”

“I appreciate the effort, but golf is not a sport, and I’d rather just finish what we started the last time we were in a car together.”

“That sounds,” Shane has to blink for a second and try to bring his thoughts back into order. “That sounds good.”

Ryan moves in, then, sprawled on top of him, his weight hot and solid against Shane's chest. They really, really don’t fit in only one of the seats, but it’s still better than sitting on opposite sides. Limbs are everywhere, bumping into the steering wheel and knocking against the parking brake, but it doesn't really matter, it doesn't take long. He can't remember the last time he was as turned on as Ryan holding him down against nice rental-car leather seating, jerking him off with one hand and not even really talking, just babbling against his ear, "Come on, come on, what are you waiting for, just do it—", and for the first time in a while, Shane lets Ryan get what he wants.

-

Shane wakes up to a crick in his neck and soreness all over from the fact he fell asleep in a car seat, offset by a residual, pleasant sweatiness on his skin, and Ryan shaking his arm. “Shane. Get up, dude.”

He shakes his head and fumbles around the dashboard for his glasses. Ryan hands them to him, and when he puts them on, he can make out a gentle crease-mark on his cheek from where he fell asleep on Shane’s shoulder. It makes something in his chest do truly disconcerting flips. 

“What is it?”

There's a twinkle in Ryan's eye that Shane really doesn't trust. “Our phones are working again.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.” Ryan is grinning, which makes no sense, considering what they’ve just gone through, and it takes Shane a second to figure out why he’s so damn gleeful.

When he does: “Don’t say it.”

“I don’t know how you want to explain it, other than bona fide spookiness.”

“What, we drove ourselves into the lair of the ‘talk about your feelings ghost’? The dreaded ‘communication vortex’?”

“You’re damn right we did. Just another win for the Boogaras.”

“I guess I should be glad there weren’t any orbs.”

Things do fall together weirdly easily after that. He manages to get in touch with the rest of the crew, who made it to the motel fine, and drops them their location pin, which is only about a 45 minute drive away. It’s early in the day, and they weren’t supposed to start filming til the afternoon, anyway, so the schedule will hopefully still be delivered upon. 

He pulls a U-turn in the middle of the highway, because it’s nowheresville, North Carolina, and who the fuck cares.

They get the music going eventually. Ryan digs the aux cord out of the gap between the seat and the floor, where it must have fallen out of his backpack, and the way back to the airport is soundtracked by Ryan’s Spotify downloads. Definitely a mixed bag, but better than supremely lo-fi Garth Brooks from the local airwaves. 

It’s mostly silence, but not completely, because this is Ryan. “Do you think there’d ever be a serial killer who just preyed on true crime journalists, or would people figure it out too fast? I feel like after, like, two murders the media would catch on. You’d have to set up some really good red herrings. Frame some people.”

“Are we journalists?”

“True crime journalists and ‘content producers’. I mean, you’d have to have some pretty diverse MOs. I feel like true crime nerds are probably some of the most paranoid people out there, so you’d have to be pretty slick. But it’d be so satisfying, I bet.”

“I don’t know if we’d be the first pickings, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“It would be good for the show, though. You gotta admit. The hype!”

“Ah, but the real question: which one of us would get it?”

“If it was me, and it was done in a spooky way, you’d get to have a nice skeptic-to-believer arc. Like Scully.”

“I mean, I guess, but come on! It’s Unsolved! No Unsolved without Ryan. I’m pretty disposable, you gotta admit. Find some other leggy skeptic around here, there must be someone kicking around.”

“Aw, come on, Shaniacs probably make up about 51% of our hits. We’d be lost without you.” 

He hums in answer, not sure he trusts himself to respond to the awful note of fondness in Ryan’s voice. Ahead of them, over the tree-cover, the clouds are starting to part.


End file.
